AT106 - Growth

Day 4 of the course, more financial matters and an excursion. We're at the coast right in the middle of the famous Dutch Deltawerken, the protection of the Netherlands against the sea and tides, very important knowing half of the country lies beneath sea-level and it's only the dunes and these Deltawerken which stop any major flooding by the sea. On the night of 31st Jan/1st Feb 1953 there was a combination of spring tide and a north-western storm which flooded huge parts of the Netherlands. There were over 1800 deaths and more than 300.000 people without a home after that and the Dutch vowed such a natural disaster should never occur any more and so the planning of the what became known as the Delta Works started. Nothing like that had ever been developed before, so the whole execution of the plan, the development, the design, the engineering was all thought up from scratch. What you're seeing in the Blip and the extra is a specially developed underwater vehicle called Portunus which had a camera to monitor the mats that were laid on the bottom of the Oosterschelde as a way to stop the soil erosion by the huge currents. Right now it's becoming overgrown by vegetation but in its days of service it was just one of the many newly developed tools that showed the growth of engineering knowledge at that time.

For Abstract Thursday AT106

Thanks so much for your comments and stars for yesterday's watch tower Blip :-)